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  The poor pan man. Arramy skidded to a halt, took hold of one of the corner posts, and brought the entire stall crashing down behind us, tools, racks, pans and all, everything landing in a din of bouncing, clanging metal.

  "I'm sorry," I tried to say in Lodesian as the wizened old pan man sat up straight on his little three-legged stool and gaped around at all of his things in shock, but Arramy was hauling me toward the wall of the building.

  No. Toward a door in the wall that was now partially hidden by what was left of the pan man's torn awning.

  Then we were in the back end of a restaurant, dodging through a bustling kitchen and frightening the sous-chefs, before zigzagging between tables full of startled patrons in the dining room, and shooting straight out the front doors and onto the boardwalk.

  Arramy slowed immediately, turned left, and headed for North-South Street at a rather sedate stroll. I understood what he was doing. The street festival was in full swing, the music thumping and sawing away, wildly dressed performers swirling through an even wilder crowd, plumes of brightly colored neffi-alli powder hanging in the air. It was only a few hundred yards away at the end of the street. If we could only get there, get swept up in it...

  Breathless, I tried to fall into step with him, but the sudden change in pace had me reeling, my heart pounding too hard for what my legs were doing. I staggered. Immediately, there was an excited yell behind us.

  Arramy swore. Instead of making a breakneck run down the boardwalk again, he shouldered open the door to the nearest shopfront. This one was a mercantile, with goods arranged in neat lines on white shelves, and sweets in glass jars on the counter. Arramy walked straight up to the teenage boy at the cashbox and asked, calmly, "Does this place have an exit to the alley out back?"

  The boy blinked at us through a pair of thick spectacles, then raised a hand, aiming it toward a hallway at the far end of the room.

  "Thank you," I rasped, giving him a smile as Arramy let go of my arm and set off down an aisle with bolts of fabric on one side and shiny new shoes on the other.

  I fell behind a little as we entered the back hallway, and with a few meters between us I finally got a good look at him.

  My stomach promptly knotted up. He was holding his left side and leaning slightly to the right, his limp decidedly worse.

  I was about to ask what was wrong, but he reached out and brought me to a stop in the utility room. He held a finger to his lips and motioned for me to stay put while he opened the back door and left it ajar. Then he unlatched a narrow door in the corner, quietly pulled a mop and bucket out of it, and gestured for me to go in.

  I stared at him, not quite believing he was telling me to hide in a broom closet.

  Then the tinkle of the door chime had me darting forward, pressing myself against the shelves at the back to make room for Arramy, while praying it wasn't already too late.

  To my relief, Arramy stepped in after me, reaching around the closet door for a moment. I heard the subtle scrape of the mop bucket on the floor, and then he drew his arm in and eased the door shut, latching it an instant before swift footsteps came pounding down the hallway, and a young male voice cried, "They've gone out the back! Come on!"

  I bit my lip, holding perfectly still as a whole herd of clothbadges went filing through the utility room and into the alley behind the store, following that first one.

  Surely it couldn't be this easy. Could it —

  A lone set of footfalls hesitated in the utility room.

  Arramy breathed a silent curse and carefully took hold of the latch pin on the inside of the door as a slow, stealthy tread came toward the closet instead of continuing on outside.

  The latch-lift rattled, and Arramy's fist clenched tight, keeping the lift from slipping the pin as that last Clothbadge deputy took the time to make sure the room was actually empty.

  There was a soft, "Huh," followed by a murmured, "All this stuff in the way... and they couldn't exactly lock it from the inside, now, could they? It's a closet." He tried the latch one last time, then gave up and walked out, closing the alley door behind him.

  I deflated, all the air leaving my lungs in one long sigh of relief. Oddly, it wasn't because we had finally... maybe... escaped. Mostly, it was because Arramy hadn't had to pop out of that closet like some sort of hellbeast to kill a boy barely old enough to shave. The Coventry men were one thing. They were older, harder, experienced thugs, intent on bringing us in and finding the binder. The clothbadges were another matter. Most of them were young street toughs just trying to earn quick money by rounding up a pair of fugitives. It didn't seem fair that one of those fugitives was a battle-ready soldier who had already survived the border wars.

  I swallowed, staring at Arramy's shoulders silhouetted by the sliver of light coming in under the door.

  Arramy let go of the latch pin. Then he swayed. It was barely more than a shift of his weight from one leg to the other, but it was enough.

  "You were hit," I said under my breath. It wasn't a question.

  "I'll be fine." He reached out and put a hand on the wall.

  "You're not bleeding everywhere are you?"

  "Don't worry," he muttered, annoyed sarcasm thick in his brogue, "I won't get any on you."

  "That's not what I — How much blood have you lost?" I snapped, my voice breaking with the strain of whispering so much.

  "Shhh. The shop boy will hear."

  Not wanting to find out what Arramy would do if that happened, I pressed my lips together and bit back my objections. If he wanted to bleed to death, then so be it. Stubborn old wyrhonde.

  Several more seconds passed.

  I sagged against the shelves behind me, trying to take the pressure off my feet and ease myself away from Arramy's back, which was little more than an inch from my front.

  I bit my lower lip. He smelled like sunlight and hot metal and fresh sweat and tar.

  I didn't actually mind.

  I wondered if it was strange to think a sweaty man didn't smell bad at a time like this. I took a surreptitious sniff. I didn't smell much better. My blouse was sticking to my skin, and the pins in my borrowed wig were digging into my scalp.

  I tipped my head back and looked up at the ceiling, trying hard not to think about how many things had gone wrong at the Stalwart, and what the consequences would be.

  Finally, Arramy moved, slipping the latch pin and easing the door outward just enough for his hand. He grabbed the mop handle, keeping it from falling to the floor as he opened the closet far enough for him to squeeze out.

  I had to choke back the insane urge to giggle. The whole world was hunting for us, and we had escaped by hiding in a cleaning closet.

  My giggle died as I got a better look at Arramy while he snuck over to the corner to check the hallway.

  He had been favoring his left leg the entire time we were running, but now there was a glossy stain oozing through his grey denim pants. Worse, there were two small, neat holes in the back of his leather vest, one above his left shoulder blade, the other just below his ribs. Both were wet and glistening.

  He turned to give me a nod, but instead of walking behind him, I came up to his left side, slipped my right arm around his waist, and brought his left arm around my shoulders. "Lean on me."

  He let out a gasp of a laugh, his eyebrows going up. "I've got at least ten stone on you, kid."

  "Fine. Don't lean. Act like you're enjoying my company, and I'll hide the mess," I hissed. "Stop being dense."

  He looked down at me, then gave me a reluctant nod.

  The shop boy seemed mildly intrigued to see us coming back through the shop, but he didn't say anything. He stood there wiping down the counter and watched us walk out the front door.

  Again, we joined the stream of people on their way to the street festival, disguising Arramy's bullet wounds and my blistered feet by acting like we had already been celebrating heavily.

  A parrot-dancer threw a handful of indigo neffi-alli powder at me, and so
meone got Arramy with purple, then red. We popped in and out of several shops, wove our way through different acting troupes, split up twice, bought a cloak and a jacket from a mendings seller and traded them for a different jacket and a longwrap at another vendor's stall. By the time we reached the southern end of North-South Street, both of us were nearly unrecognizable. Our clothes and hair were splattered with brightly colored powder, our faces were painted with clay-white, streamers were draped liberally around our necks; we looked like every other festival celebrant, and if there were any Coventry agents still on our trail, I couldn't tell.

  Which meant we needed to stop running. Arramy had been putting more and more weight on me in spite of the fact that he had sworn he wouldn't, and he was limping heavily. I glanced up at him as we neared the last of the performing troupes on the corner of North-South and Gunderoodt.

  "So," I said, slowing. "Where to now?"

  He had been watching his feet, but he brought his head up and looked around, squinting in the late afternoon sun. "Keep going south."

  I cleared my throat. "That would be straight, then?"

  He gave me a sidelong glance. "Yes. That would be straight."

  I nodded and hefted his arm more firmly into place over my shoulders. Then we started across Gunderoodt to the opening of the much narrower, much plainer and much dirtier South Street, heading into the squalor of the low-district slums.

  I could think of one sort of place that might offer a modicum of privacy and a cloak of anonymity, if not actual security. Halfway down a nameless side street I found what I was looking for. Arramy allowed me to lead him up the dilapidated steps of the wastrels' inn, his only objection a small grunt when I opened the front door and pulled him inside.

  11. The Wastrels' Inn

  15th of Uirra, Continued

  A shroud of foul-smelling yellow haze hung below the crumbling ceiling, and I covered my nose with my free hand. Men and women lay on every available flat surface, some of them passed out drunk or stupid with drugs, some of them still smoking pipes that stank of burning earth or drinking White Cloud from little clay cups. None of them even looked at us, their whole attention on escaping reality.

  I held my breath and led Arramy down the length of a front parlor in what probably used to be a private residence. There were too many people in the rooms we passed, so I kept going, shuffling us on through a dining room, then a sprawling kitchen, and finally into an empty back room – empty because it was a sun-room, and all the curtains had been torn down, rendering it far too bright for bloodshot, hung-over eyes while light was still pouring through the windows.

  I sat Arramy down on an overturned liquor crate that I pushed out into a relatively clean patch in the middle of the floor.

  "What are we doing here?" he asked, surveying the piles of mess everywhere.

  "We... are hiding in the last place the Coventry will think to look for us. I hope." I bent and began undoing the buckles on his vest, intending to slide the thing off of him so I could finally get a better look at the damage.

  Arramy watched my fingers. Then he reached up and caught my hands, holding them with surprising gentleness.

  I froze, my pulse skipping a beat.

  "You're nai what I expected," he murmured, brogue thick. He was still looking at my fingers, now engulfed in his. Then he closed his eyes, his jaw knotting as he exhaled through his teeth and bent to rest his elbows on his knees, touching his forehead to the knuckles of his thumbs.

  My hands were still caged in his, but I didn't pull away. It was an oddly penitent gesture, almost as if he were praying. Perplexed, I looked down at him, waiting.

  There was purple and red nephi-alli streaked through his hair, and smears of clay-white on his cheek. Unbidden, my gaze slid over his features, seeing details I hadn't let myself notice before. The long angles of his cheekbones that suggested his mountain heritage, the sharp indents at the corners of his mouth. The slight cleft in his chin. Even the fact that his hair wasn't actually platinum, but sun-bleached wheat-blond going prematurely silver, was somehow... perfect...

  He's also bleeding. Staring will not help him. With a start, I cleared my throat. "We need to get you cleaned up."

  Nodding, he let go, his shoulders bowing slightly as he sat up, his eyes still shut.

  Silence fell between us, full of some nameless, wordless current, as if we had crossed a line somehow without even knowing where the line had been. It was ridiculous, but my heart still beat too hard as I began unbuckling his vest again.

  Once I had it open, I eased the right half of it down his arm before drawing it gently away from his back and then down his left arm. The whole left side of his shirt was soaked through, the blood dried to a dark, ugly brown at the edges. I bit my lip and bent to peer at those two neat, round holes, first the one below his ribs, then the other one in the highest part of his shoulder. That one had a bigger, slightly messier exit wound just above his collarbone, and I breathed a little prayer of thanks. Both of them could easily have been fatal, but somehow there he was, alive.

  Gently, I tugged the tail end of his shirt free of his pants and peeled it off of his skin, wincing when I had to pull it free of a patch of dried blood. Arramy didn't do much more than hiss out a curse and duck his head through the neckline when I brought the back of his shirt all the way up. Then I rolled it down his arms and off, in the process getting an all-too-intimate view of faded scars that crisscrossed his shoulders, and the lean muscles chiseled beneath a deep tan that didn't end at his collar.

  I was glad he still had his eyes closed because I promptly blushed to the roots of my hair. Annoyed, I ground my teeth and made myself look beyond him at something – anything – else while scouring my brain for a reasonable thought. Alcohol. I needed to find alcohol. Yes. That was one of the reasons I had wanted to find a place like this. There would be something alcohol related lying around somewhere. At least, there had been in the wastrel house near the docks in Garding that some of our sailors had frequented.

  I tossed Arramy's ruined shirt on the floor and marched out into the kitchen. I had seen a man sleeping against the wall by the pantry, a fifth of cheap yellow-bird clutched loosely in his hands. The drunk didn't even stir when I pulled the bottle free of his limp fingers. I took a quick sniff of it just to make sure it was actually rye, wrinkled my nose at the unmistakable scent of 90 proof, then returned to the back room, all business, determined to look at nothing but bullet holes.

  Arramy opened his eyes when he heard me coming, saw the yellow-bird, and lifted an eyebrow. "You really are full of surprises," he muttered as I moved around behind him. He dragged in a breath, swearing behind his teeth as I started splashing the liquor over the clean-through on his shoulder.

  The hole below his ribs had no exit wound, which meant the bullet was still in there. That one would have to wait until we got back to the plantation. I didn't have anything to get the round out with, and I certainly was no trained surgeon. The best I could do was a bandage. I handed Arramy the bottle of rye, then hiked up the hem of the ugly orange skirt and began tearing the ruffles off the top tier of my petticoat.

  Thought of the manor house brought me to another problem.

  "NaVarre didn't get out of the Stalwart," I said quietly. "The clothbadges were asking him questions. I think they might have arrested him."

  Arramy took a swig of the yellow-bird, swallowed, shuddered, then released his breath on a short "Hah!" He nodded once as he lowered the bottle to the floor. "I know."

  "What if he didn't make it out?" I asked, voicing a fear that had been growing larger and larger with every step we took. "What if we get back to the plantation and he's dead?"

  Arramy was quiet. Then he shook his head. "I don't know."

  I tore the ruffle in half down its length, then tore each half in two again, draping them over my arm while I folded one of the strips into a pad that could cover the hole below his ribs. I held my hand out for the rye, taking it from him and dousing the pad with a
lcohol before placing it gently over the bullet wound. He had to hold it in place himself while I wrapped one of the other strips around his waist and tied it off.

  Then I bandaged his shoulder with another rye-soaked pad, crisscrossing another strip of cotton over his shoulder blades, under his arm and then around the opposite shoulder. When I was done, I grabbed his leather vest, rinsed the inside off with the liquor, and helped him slide it back on. It would protect the bandages and make it so much easier for me to think.

  I was about to start working on a bandage for his leg when he shook his head. "It's fine." He pushed himself up off the footstool. "I've lived with worse. We need to keep going."

  I stood there, fatigue and hunger roaring at me to sit down. Right there, where I was standing. I had been on my last wind when I found the wastrel house, and now that we had stopped running, the thought of running some more was enough to make my whole body ache. "Are you sure?" I asked, hating how desperate I sounded.

  He stepped around me and limped for the doorway. "There will be roadblocks set up all the way to the nearest settlement by dawn."

  I sighed. He was right. I looked down at my stolen slippers and sighed, my shoulders sagging as I imagined what it was going to feel like, walking all the way back to the plantation in those things. The thin cotton uppers had come loose from the equally thin soles, and my toes were poking through. I wanted to cry.

  Wearily, I turned to find Arramy down on one knee beside a woman who had passed out just inside the kitchen. He already had one of her shoes free and was working on the other one. The woman roused and mumbled something, swatting at him with clumsy hands. He fended her off, cruelly stripping off her half-boot even though she clearly didn't want him to. Then he swore as he heaved himself upright.

  "Here," he grunted, holding the shoes out to me.

  I groaned, hating what I was about to do. I was going to steal from someone who didn't have anything at all. Again. The shoes were shabby, and the heels were worn down, but they were better than the slippers. That was all that mattered. The slippers wouldn't get me out of Nim K, but the shoes would. Reluctantly, I let Arramy place the half-boots in my hands, ashamed of how easy it was to reason myself into thieving.